With two finely crafted, award-winning novels, Larry Woiwode has attracted both popular and critical attention. Writing in a deliberately mannered, traditional, realistic style, he evokes to a degree unusual in modern fiction an emotional response from his readers. His fiction is tinged with personal reminiscence and seemingly autobiographical details, but he has also proved adept at projecting himself into the consciousnesses of a wide variety of characters of both sexes. His second novel, Beyond the Bedroom Wall (1975), merits special attention as a revival of the family chronicle, a revered though out-of-fashion form, and for its montage format with diverse characters and settings, a shifting point of view and temporal structure, a variety of narrative forms, and a complex, episodic plot. About one-third of its chapters appeared originally as short stories, but Woiwode skillfully weaves them into a unified whole. His fiction is religious and intellectual in the broadest...